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fateandloveentwined · 4 days

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Such true words! And sometimes I feel like I still don't have a grip on finding my way back into the order of things, things have dulled since covid and constantly I feel like I'm coping and failing to feel like I'm valuing the task enough to inherently be motivated to tackle it.

...Very clumsy sentence, but if anyone has ways to share that worked for them, please do! I'd never be more interested to learn about them :)

here's the reason you procrastinate

based on Fuschia Sirois' research

everyone procrastinate at some point. research suggests that almost 1 in 4 people procrastinate on a fairly regular basis, and the rates are even higher among college and university students ( 50% of them procrastinate regularly and about 85-90% do so occasionally ).

because procrastination is so common we tend not to put too much thought into it, in the end what is the problem? it's just delay.

well, it's not. actually procrastination is harmful delay ( so defined by the researchers ); it is a form of delay which is:

voluntary

unnecessary

involves important tasks which you intended to do

people often underestimate the consequences of procrastination and how debilitating and harmful it can be. if you delay dealing with ( for example ) your academic works, of course you can expect some negative results in that area, but what about the collateral consequences of it?

research has shown that people who have problems with procrastination have low physical and mental health and practice less healthy behaviors. they deal with depression, stress and anxiety.

just think about the enormous amount of stress that procrastination brings: first of all, constantly chasing deadlines. deadlines can nag anyone, even those who don't struggle with delaying, but then it ends, the job is turned in, and everything goes back to normal. for procastinators this is not the case, they will keep putting off important things and will constantly end up with an imminent deadline.

so, if it's so harmful for your health, why do people do it? some people think it's about laziness or poor time managment, but actually:

laziness isn't procrastination. if you're lazy you don't have the energy to do anything, instead procrastinators are always busy with a thousand non-essential tasks to do, in fact they avoid doing one specific task, not every task ( for example if i need to study, but i'm procrastinating it, i end up cleaning my room )

poor time managment it's actually a symptom of procrastination, not a cause.

from a psychological perspective the origins of procrastination are rooted in negative emotions and the urge to cope with them through avoidance. so actually procrastination is about poor mood managment, not poor time managment.

procrastination starts when we have a task that's unpleasant, but we have to do it. and we use procrastination then as a way to get relief from those negative emotions associated with the task, so basically it's not even about avoiding the task, but it's about avoid the negative emotions that we associate with the task.

we need to avoid stress and aversive feeling that come with the task, especially when we don't feel like we can manage those negative emotions at the moment. so we take the task, we put it aside, and it's instant relief. it's fast, it's easy and it works for a little while, then that sense of shame, guilt and self-blame starts to kick in.

so why do we keep procrastinating? for that sense of relief, because that made us feel rewarded and we tend to repeat behaviors that rewarded us. this can easily lead to a cycle of procrastination.

however, the negative thoughts that we have ( "why didn't i start earlier?", "i'm letting myself down" etc. ) don't actually make us take action. they just add layers of layers on pre-existing negativity.

so how do you get out of the procastination cycle?

go back to valuing your task, if it's so important that you do it, remind yourself why you are doing it

remember that we tend to overestimate the discomfort that a given challenge will bring us. probably your task isn't even that time-consuming, unpleasant and frustrating

be compassionate and and forgive yourself, it's an effective strategy to reduce the negative emotions associated with the task. you are not the first nor the last person to procrastinate, we are all human and we all make mistakes. research has shown that doing so reduces the risk of procastination.

hope you enjoyed this little explanation, here's my sources: https://youtu.be/xTEPNxx0MsA

#yess thank you #my reblogs are getting so random actually but it's just gonna be whatever feels nice or important #fate's stuff

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fateandloveentwined · 21 days

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Hi! I've recently started wanting to get into C-Dramas and I could swear you had a rec response to an ask awhile ago (featuring classic dramas? one of the recs was Legend of Condor Heroes?) and I cannot for the life of me find it. You have such good taste and I can't believe I've lost it. Do you have any recs for Chinese dramas or a post about it? Thank you!

Sorry this took so long! I had to write a lot of shit. SO.

*steeples fingers against each other in villain style* I’m afraid I can’t personally recommend very many Chinese dramas on account of I’ve only watched four from start to finish (although I liked those four, or else I wouldn’t have stuck through 30-50 episodes apiece for them). Here are some not very disciplined sales pitches for them! I hope I manage to get across at least some of what I enjoyed about them and how I experienced them as a person who is still pretty new to cdramas.

1. Chen Qing Ling (aka The Untamed, available on Netflix). Actually, if you are following my blog and sending me asks, you have probably either watched this already or have a general idea of what it is about. If I’m wrong, and you want to know more, let me know. I’m eager to give you a highly biased pitch!

2. Legend of the Condor Heroes (the 2017 version; I watched it on Youtube). I have to specify the year because there’s like nine LOCHs, and that is not counting the adaptations of the LOCH novel sequels.

I was interested in LOCH first and foremost because it’s the progenitor of the wuxia genre, which in turn later spawned xianxia.* And it certainly never stopped being fun to find myself going “oh THAT’S where that moment in CQL came from! That’s where the tragic sworn brotherhoods that end in betrayal comes from, the dramatic plunges of a cliff, that’s why Wei Wuxian tortures people with his evil magic flute and pours his wine all over his mouth instead of drinking from a cup like a normal fucking human being!” But I also got very genuinely interested in the story for itself! It’s a big story, a gripping drama (that has so much comedy in it) with more themes than I could possibly articulate in a short blurb, and just. SO many intensely memorable characters. Some absolutely fantastic fight scenes (something you do not get in CQL, lol). There’s characters walking around in absolute clownshoes most of the time who’ll pop up as supporting characters in a sub plot that will destroy your heart. There’s Michael Miu swanning around looking fabulous in his highlighted wig. There’s a secondary romance couple with such a fucked up thing going on that the fact that they’re technically siblings is genuinely the least of their concerns. (There’s a less problematic and genuinely delightful main romantic pairing, too, if you want some of that; I loved Huang Rong so much I named a character after her and Guo Jing is kind of a walking moral compass in a messy world.)

Also, I developed a major actor crush on Chen Xingxu, who plays Yang Kang, a sometime villain/narrative foil who genuinely sucks too hard to achieve blorbohood in my mind, but my god what a performance; he’s fantastic . (BTW you’re a Wen Qing enjoyer, as I am, Meng Ziyi plays Chen Xingxu’s adoptive sister/gf, Mu Nianci! although I am once again stressing that as obstacles go, that’s barely on anyone’s radar, which I think should convey some of the flavor of that particular romance.)

@autumnslantern and @tavina-writes were the people who pitched so hard on LOCH I bit, and if you want, I can dig up their much better rec posts! I am but a LOCH baby.

3. Love Between Fairy and Devil (a xianxia, available on Netflix). I am told the writing on this show is like, actively in conversation with xianxia tropes in a way that wasn’t really obvious to me as a xianxia first-timer (such as featuring a Mean Girl love rival character who transcends shallow moronic bitchhood and has genuine complexity and a story that isn’t just about her crush). All I can say on the writing front is that I thought it was very well written and also has the notable quality that pretty much no one acts like an idiot just to move the plot along, which you honestly can’t take for granted in television, even in Quality Television. Everyone on this show does things for rational or understandable reasons, based on motivations that are coherent and internally consistent; with the exception of the heavenly emperor, who’s kind of just there, being a dick, everyone has some depth and nuance. I ADORED the main pairing, especially once the male lead gets his emotions back (tl;dr, male leads starting off having suffered an emotional lobotomy is apparently common xianxia staple; I thought Dylan Wang did a particularly nice job with a guy literally learning how to feel and express emotions after having had them violently ripped out of his soul in early childhood). I loved the thoughtful way Orchid and Dongfang Qingcang approach the very idea of marriage, and the responsibilities it places on you, particularly when you have obligations to other people; it’s probably the most thoughtful take on that I’ve seen in romantic fiction in while.

Despite really, really loving the storyline and the romance of the main characters, one of the things about this show I find myself dwelling on the most often, since finishing it, is the villain’s plotline, and the awful, unavoidable way it ends. This is a show that understands the nature of tragedy, y’all! There are two people who could have avoided it all (like 99% of the plot, straight up) if they’d just made different choices—but the only way they could have NOT made those choices would have been to be completely different people. It could only go one way. That’s a tragedy.

4. The Starry Love (a xianxia, I watched it on YouTube). I’ll be real. I started watching this 90% because I liked Chen Xingxu’s face and the things he does with it, and he’s the male lead in this one. I ended up enjoying it more than anything I’d watched since CQL on the basis of a) CXX gets to play four (arguably five) different characters (although they’re all the same person) and he’s fucking great as all of them, and b) Yetan! Oh my darling Yetan! She is the female lead and while it took her awhile to grow on me—she’s A Lot at first, prone to scheming and pulling cringe wacky capers and seemingly very selfish (except about her sister—who is lovely and they have the sweetest relationship which gets a very satisfying amount of airtime)—once she started to grow on me, oh my goodness, I loved her. Just fucking adored her. She’s one of my favorite new female characters I’ve met in a while, with a really appealing performance by Landy Li. She has a wonderful arc! Like, the more you learn about her, the more you understand WHY she’s like that, but she also has a capacity for kindness and selflessness that got to me, given how awful her life was, before we met her. She’s also extremely intelligent and capable, and her scheming brain gets a lot more palatable when she’s using it for the common good, and that’s so fun? The Yetan/Youqin romance totally sucked me in as well, especially in the later parts of it, when they’re both very much in love with each other; it was one of those relationships where you can see, without needing to be told, how they are not just good TO one another, but good FOR one another; how being in each other’s orbits makes them into the best and kindest versions of themselves.

General comment that this show also truly surprised me at times, and not just in terms of surprise plot twists, but in the way it sometime revealed hidden depths and nuance to superficial-seeming secondary characters or simplistic backstories. Not everyone got that treatment, but I really liked that every time it happened.

(Oh also there is a secondary romantic pairing between Yetan’s sister and a dirtbag guy I wanted to punch a lot, and I enjoyed that romance less, but the dirtbag guy comes paired with a henchman who spends most of his waking minutes dunking on his clown boss, so at minimum, there is some very good comedy to be found there.)

I’m currently watching the xianxia Eternal Love aka Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms, which was recommended to me less on the grounds that it was, like, good, and more that it was the megahit that spawned the current boom of xianxia cdramas (so not the progenitor of xianxia, but a great populizer and a big influence) and also that it will probably make me cry really really hard at some point. It’s been slow going in part because while it’s entertaining and every scene is quite watchable, I am finding it narratively…not…entirely coherent. (Although in its defense, I was watching it on YouTube and Youtube was playing mindgames with me about which episodes I’d seen before. I have recently switched to watching it on Netflix.) I don’t think I’m even at the main plot yet, so I’ll let you know how I’m finding it when I’m a few dozen more episodes deep!

*Where wuxia is a relatively grounded genre of martial arts fantasy—people in wuxia can do really sick martial arts stuff that’s superhuman in nature, thanks to the aid of spiritual cultivation, but they’re still very much human and tend to be set in a recognizably human world; LOCH is a wuxia, and CQL is mostly wuxia as well—xianxia is more high fantasy. There may be humans in xianxias, and some of them are also cultivators, but characters are just as likely to to be gods, fairies, devils, or beasts (with human aspects); immortal characters live life spans in measured in hundreds of thousands of years and often reincarnate into recognizable versions of themselves if they happen to get killed. Plants and rocks cultivate into human forms and then go get a job in Heaven. Huge wars between immortals/Heaven and other races/realms are big genre staples. Xianxia is also a very female-oriented genre that puts enormous emphasis on intense feelings and character relationships, more than on, say, plot. It would be oversimplifying to call xianxia shows soap operas, but I think they function very similarly in certain ways (telenovelas are probably another good comparison), and my own love of American daytime soap operas was definitely a contributing factor in my ability to easily roll with silly/contrived/cliched story choices in the xianxias I’ve watched long as the subsequent dramatic outcome meant I ended up howling in the chat about GUYS. MY EMOTIONS. MY EMOTIONS!

#don't know if I can recommend everything because I don't watch cdramas often but post!!#cdrama #chinese culture

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